doubt not- the future will be kinder
by JadeLecter
Summary: Remus stretches out and takes the thin, warm chest in his arms and rests his head over the thrumming of Sirius' heart. What did these hands do? He desperately asks himself. What did these hands do before they held him? What did these eyes behold, when he was not here? / Remus and Sirius thrive in Grimmauld Place for a long, dawdling year.


_**A/N – I had previously published this on my Ao3 ( JadeLupine), alongside my Remus/Sirius PoA story. But I sort of liked this piece and I thought I wouldn't mind adding it to my collection at alongside all my other Harry Potter pieces. I hope you have a good time reading it!**_

 _Lie low at Lupin's_ – Sirius had kept this thought last on his priorities because if he had kept thinking about it, if he had kept letting the image of safe Remus, of smiling Remus in his mind; he would not have been able to alert Figg or Jones, any of the old crowd for he would have constantly thought about the warmth of Remus' arms on his icy bones and tired soul. But now they had been alerted, now they knew that Voldemort was back and now they knew that Harry Potter is in the worst danger he has ever faced – Sirius sags a little on Remus' doorframe and knocks. And there, Remus opens the door (Sirius ponders weakly how nobody would be able to open doors freely any longer) and raises his dark eyebrows. But he is Remus and he has never asked questions, not when Sirius burst in grinning with tropical sweetmeats and pictures of the gay fiestas in Brazil and not when he shivers in now, clutching his elbows.

"What is it?" Remus asks languidly, clearing a space for Sirius on his sofa from the multitude of dusty books on it. Sirius is unwilling to think about things when he is in the safeness of Remus' thatched cottage and the whistle of the pressure cooker, so he picks up a book. A Passage to India, he reads the cover, and looks at the faded illustrations – flicks slowly to the very back of the book where he finds a picture of two men of dark and fair skin embracing.

"You like your homo crap classy, don't you?" Sirius jokes, putting the book aside and clinging to the last second of normalcy as they had done in seventh year, decades ago. "Aziz and Fielding embrace on horses, the caption says. How bloody gay can you get?"

"It's a piece of postcolonial literature, Sirius. I can lend it to you next time you're on the run if you promise not to get slobber on it." Remus snatches back the book and inspects the dust jacket and spine meticulously. Sirius feels like his heart is breaking – so he opens his mouth;

"Voldemort's back." He coughs out. "He's back, Remus – I've alerted the old crowd, I've been told to stay with you from Dumbledore himself."

"Oh." Remus' eyes close slowly, his reaction is far less emotional than Sirius' had been and he would have taken it for nonchalance had not Sirius known Remus like the grit in his nails. It was not nonchalance or apathetic qualities, and rather the fact that Remus is no stranger to disappointment. "How queer. To transcend from Forster's literature to Voldemort. How do you know this, Sirius?"

"Harry…" he starts, and he has begun talking more than he has ever talked before for the past year, more than he had chatted with Buckbeak, more than he had warned Harry and his friends, more than he had discussed with Dumbledore. Something about Remus' earnest anxiousness and furrowed brows over his tired eyes made Sirius shudder in a sort of joy – and made him vow that no matter if the world disintegrated before them and crumbled from dust to ashes, or even if Dumbledore turned out to be Voldemort or that Hogwarts breaks into pieces – he swears that this time, nothing would ever make him distrust Remus. It is this though that dries up his mouth, and as Remus begins to consider in his head the implications of the graveyard scene, Sirius leans into him and presses down as if he would like to mingle his being with Remus'. Remus closes his eyes and puts an arm around him, it is like they are at school again and he would like nothing better to stick up a finger at James who was calling out friendly homophobic slurs or to throw his book at Peter's sputtering, but right now in this moment, he strokes Sirius' hair for he is all that's left.

"I'm glad you both have found comfort, but I need to discuss several technical matters." Dumbledore's head sat in the dying flames – he looked tired but his face was creased into the lines of a smile. Remus jumped up and knelt by the flames, Sirius following more lazily as Dumbledore cleared his throat and looked at the two men.

"As no doubt Sirius has alerted you, we are at war again. Hence, I must inform you that now we need protocol and headquarters, as well as proper discussion with the members. I will be able to recruit some of the more liberal members of the Ministry, Kingsley Shacklebolt for one as he is in charge of the manhunt for you, Sirius." Dumbledore paused to draw breath, his age apparent in his lines but not his eyes. "Are you aware of any more possible recruitments?"

"There's Sirius' kid cousin, isn't there?" Remus scratched his chin, recalling a trip to the Ministry the year before. "What's her name… Andromeda's little girl. She's an Auror now, and one of those chatty, excited ty-"

"WHAT?" Sirius' eyes widened and he smacked the floor next to Dumbledore's face and made the man wince slightly. "Remus, you're shitting me – Tonks was literally eight bloody years old last time I saw her, that little tyke convinced me to pierce her ears and got me nearly walloped by Andy. You mean to say she's old enough to be an _Auror_?"

"Sure, Sirius." Remus quipped, easygoing. "Hard to remember your advanced age and senility?"

"Furthermore," Dumbledore overrode them, "The Weasleys have also been taken into confidence, as Molly Weasley had the pleasure of running into Sirius today, as well as Severus Snape."

"Snape is in the Order now?" Sirius barked, falling back onto his heels. "Hell no am I sitting in a –"

"Sirius, couldn't you –"

"The bastard lost you a job and lost me my freedom, I will _not_."

There are moments Remus wants to lock up within himself and grab on with his fingernails. Sirius Black was taking a bath and Remus was sharpening his scissors over the sink and the scene was so damn painfully domestic that Remus knows that if he ever sees the Mirror of Erised, this will forever be the image seared into it. Sirius' hair is long and dripping down his back, he looks wild and violent, Bacchus – perhaps, like someone who would run naked through the forest ad scream songs. Remus sees himself in the mirror, pale and pinched, eyes pale grey and lips white – and he wonders again how such unlikely blends of colours would fall in love.

"You ready with the scissors, Moony? The hair's bloody itchy." Sirius complained, and looked up at him. Remus felt another thread of happiness twist painfully through him – Sirius looks so vulnerable and beautiful, almost womanish, looking up at him. "Not too much, keep it at shoulder length."

Remus rolls up the cuffs of his trousers and sits on the rim of the tub, the pale metal of the scissors in his hands. He takes up in his hand the trailing lengths of Sirius' hair and presses the scissors to it, closing them slightly and watching the hair fall into the bathwater, making pathways through the water as if they were kings. He cuts again, the slight metallic ping of the scissors masking the words that lay between them – the fear of Voldemort and for Harry, the inexplicable memory of James and Lily, the violent hate toward Peter. It all contracts itself into the snicking of the blades and their sharp kisses of them on Sirius' long hair. But words bubble up within Remus, forcing their way to the surface as the real bubbles fade from the bath.

"You've suffered enough." He says, blandly. "You'll never have to suffer again, I swear it."

"Huh." Sirius closes his eyes. He runs his fingers through his hair to make sure it was at perfect shoulder length, then leans backward on Remus' knees. "I'm back to that bloody house again. To be locked in again. Remus – twelve years I've been locked in."

"I'll stay with you." Remus laughed through his nose, maudlin, as if he knew that was no compensation. He hurries his words on, as if to make up for the momentary sentimentality. "Of course, so will the Weasleys', since they said they prefer bringing their lot over instead of Apparating. You'll like those kids, Sirius, especially the twins."

"Hm," considered Sirius. He turns around and looks upward at Remus and again – there is that air of vulnerability about him that makes Remus looks down at the hair floating in the tub. He bends down, and kisses the wet angle of Sirius' cheekbone and the dripping line of his jaw, stroking a hand down the aristocratic nose. Sirius had hated his features in school and even after they grew up and went on holiday to India, Sirius had loudly denounced the caste system out of no savior complex but due to raw personal reasons. But Remus loves his features because they are beautifully incongruous with his voice and his laughter and his wildness. Sirius stands up, he is glorious in his nudity, all silver lines of water trailing down painful ribs and wired arms stretching out, out, out to slide off Remus' shirt, to expose his own white scars and angry bruises and the wetness of Sirius' merman-like body presses close to Remus and kisses him. Sirius steps out of the tub and pushes Remus backwards, slowly as if dancing blindfolded backward, backward, backward until he falls on the unmade sheets of his bed. His trousers are coming off, and Sirius' mouth is hot and bright and wet on him, and Remus closes his eyes and curls his fists. Water drips from Sirius' hair onto him, his lips swollen from kissing and sucking, and Remus closes his eyes.

Later, when it's over, Sirius is laughing tiredly beside him – sweat or water glints in the hollows of his neck and he is so old and so happy. Sirius' eyes close slowly, a smile still on his lips – his teeth glinting through the gap and hope buzzes frantically in the room like a manic butterfly. Remus stretches out and takes the thin, warm chest in his arms and rests his head over the thrumming of Sirius' heart. What did these hands do? He desperately asks himself. What did these hands do before they held him? What did these eyes behold, when he was not here?

How did I live, he asks, floating down into sleep.

Remus doesn't really mind the atrocities of Grimmauld Place. To be perfectly honest. Of course, he can't claim to _like_ the place; not with it's doors that slammed shut on his face (his nose has bled twice in the past week), not with the odorous house elf sneaking claims about washing laundry when Remus was in the bathroom, not the assorted house elf heads that Sirius often threatened Kreacher with, _definitely_ not the portrait of Phineas Nigellus that would insult him every time he walks past and especially not Sirius' mother, who shrieked at the highest pitch about every indiscretion Remus and Sirius had committed, beginning from birth. But Sirius was there, grumpy and irritating – but far more of the Sirius he had envisioned languishing in prison and far more than the skeleton that had escaped. For this, Remus would live in Azkaban, if he could see such a face every day.

"She gave birth to me, the bloody woman has no right!" Sirius snorted, stirring the tea Molly handed to him. "Remus, if you're ever finding that counter curse for the portrait, you better let me burn it myself. Probably throw Kreacher on the flames."

"Better not let Hermione hear you say that, Sirius." Molly said darkly, sitting across from her husband as Remus dropped into the sofa next to Sirius. They were resting after the stringent cleaning measures they'd taken, which primarily involved forcing Kreacher into a bathtub whilst simultaneously dissuading Sirius from drowning him. "Remus, how was patrol?"

"Quite interesting." Remus yawned. "Tonks is Apparating behind me so –"

"Oh Lord, she'd wake the portrait –" Molly hissed, rising up immediately as her teacup clattered dangerously in the saucer. "Why that girl doesn't walk with _some_ decorum, I don't unders…"

"HI MOLLY, I DIDN'T TRIP THIS TIME, INNIT? Learning some of that good girl attitu – oops!" Tonks' accent floated aggressively down the hallway, doing what damage she claimed to have avoided this time. "I really am sorry, Molly, I bet she's just wakin' up when I'm around cos she hates me! I didn't even try this time!"

"BLOOD TRAITORS, MUDBLOODS AND SCUM IN THE HOUSE OF BLACK!" The portrait awoke and began foaming at the mouth again as Sirius rolled his eyes, taking the momentary lapse of Molly's absence to wink at Remus. "ANIMALS AND BESMIRCHERS OF THE HOUSEHOLD NAME."

"That' the Weasleys and Tonks." Remus counted on his fingers as Sirius' mother began reeling of her crimes. "And then we've got….Hermione, the animals belonging to the children… … has she stopped, Molly?"

"No. If Tonks wants to wake her great aunt, then Tonks has to sing her great aunt to sleep." Molly said determinedly, shoving her wand into her pocket as she sat back down next to her husband.

"…SODOMIZERS IN THE NOBLE HALLS!" Sirius's mother finished, her breath rattling asthmatically, as Tonks probably strained to shift the curtains closed. Remus closed his eyes and prayed to anyone who was listening, that Sirius does not know the meaning of sodomy and that he will not open his mouth in front of Molly.

"Hey, I knew she wouldn't forget us." Sirius grinned, as Molly's eye twitched slightly.

Remus hated Grimmauld Place.

"I hate this damn house." Sirius murmured, his voice devoid of tone nor inflection. Remus thinks sometimes that he's bloody tired of Sirius and his moods and turns of emotion. He catches the thought however, and grinds it into black dust – because at least Sirius was alive. He draws out the chair and sees the man drop into it, and he knows that love is to serve someone as if you were a slave to their heart and he knows Sirius would do the same for him. So he only smiles unevenly at his lover, and hands him a book.

"I don't give a shit –" Sirius starts, before looking at the cover embossed with peeling letters. Remus is reminded of the peeling letters on his briefcase – Sirius and James had given it to him during their NEWT year, when Remus had been the height of irritating with his constant preaching at them to at least read the textbooks once. "Your Muggle literature again. Dostoevsky. Well, I'll keep it, because you gave it here. But there's no bloody way I'll read it."

So devoted, Remus thinks with a surge of fondness for his lover who hated literature.

"Remus," Sirius almost begs now – the reaffirmation that there was someone here who loved him has injected all the passion back into his voice. "Remus, I need to get out of this bloody house. It reminds me so much of them, of their damn pure blood mania, how they hated me and I hated them. Reminds me of smarmy bitch Bellatrix, and that suckup Regulus, and oh – _how_ Mother would fake her bullshit softness to try to get me to their side. Evil, the lot of them."

Remus knows what he would say, had he more confidence in himself. He knows he would expostulate at length about how Sirius' mother truly did love him in her own odd way and how his brother looked up to him, slavishly on the outside but Sirius never seemed to understand it was natural for a boy to look up to his brother. Remus has a feeling Sirius' mother had wept while blasting off his name, and how Andromeda and her Muggleborn boyfriend would invite Sirius over for a fortnight every summer. For a second he feels a thrum of dislike for Sirius, who can't understand human emotion and preferred to lay his skills in courage and believing better for everyone.

"The world is not split into good people and Death Eaters." He says instead. He thinks it's a weak and ineffectual response but he sees Sirius taking those words in, and he wants to continue but doesn't. Instead, he scoots two chairs up and sits next to Sirius, letting his long fingers touch the cheekbones and his pale nails hovering over the hollows under his eyes. I am holding the whole world in my hands, he thinks – the whole damn world. But here's the question. Does the world know it is being held? Does it know that there is someone who would burn himself alive and rip himself apart to hold this world? Does the world know it is loved? Or does it look outside at the infinitesimal stars and galaxies and think – you are freer than I.

"You're right," Sirius smiles again – and kisses Remus suddenly. It's a quick kiss, full of youthful surprise bubbling between them and these two old men feel lithe and spry and young.

"Anyhow," Remus continues, a blush touching his bloodless cheeks for a second (he is not sixteen again, he will not have it). "Anyhow, Dumbledore will not let this war go on too long. Not when the children are involved so deeply. Harry, and his friends."

"Damn it, Remus!" Sirius' eyes darkened from the boyish tinge frighteningly quick, his hand slams on the grain of the table. "We were bloody kids last time too! And did this fucking war stop then, huh? Not until two lives were taken, eh? Two of the most worthy –"

"Not two lives!" Remus shoots back, and he doesn't know why anger rises in him. Sirius should be allowed to grieve for James and Lily, he knows that more than anyone but Sirius must not be allowed to think that only he is suffering. Perhaps the addition of so much grief of others could lighten his own. "Thousands of damn lives, Sirius, Frank and Alice – they got tortured to death, the McKinnons, the fact that Molly Weasley loves her twin sons more than all her other children because she's reminded of Fabian and Gideon, and how she tries to _hide_ it, how she damn well screams at them because she's ashamed of that. There's Peter's mother – who lost her son in so many ways, and – and us. And us."

"Us." Sirius' eyes glitter. He looks like he was going to snarl something back to Remus, perhaps even hit him with the closed bluntness of a fist but instead he sags in his seat. "What are we then? Two bloody old men, pining for things they've lost ages ago. Locked in an old mansion. It should sound romantic, but it's not."

"I'm sorry." Remus murmurs. He cannot look at Sirius' impossibly full eyes or his disappointment.

"It's fine." Sirius says shortly, and stalks out, his chair wavering dangerously. Remus sits at the table and looks at the long black burn marks on it, and fingers the greys in his hair. _The flour is gon,_ he thinks of his damn Muggle literature – Chaucer of seven hundred years ago, _there is namoore to tel – the bran as best as I kan now moste I sel._

Remus pores over a sheaf of parchment with drawings and plans on it in Bill's sure, messy hand. There was an outline of Gringotts bank designed by Bill, and the Ministry of Magic, cobbled together by Arthur's pencil lines (he preferred to try out the Muggle instrument at all times) and Tonks' relentless erasing and smudging. He was alone in the kitchen with the exception of Molly Weasley, who was wiping the dishes, her eyes still red after her earlier outburst at the sight of the Boggart which flashed different shades of dead people. He feels somewhat sorry for her, but also jealous in a way that his Boggart would never be anything but flashes of the moon behind the clouds.

"Remus," she seems to have read his thoughts, or at least the direction of them. "Why has my Boggart…changed?"

"Well," Remus shuffled the parchment and looked at Molly's back. "I'm not really the person to as-"

"Your modesty really _is_ ridiculous, Remus!" Molly vigorously turned around and in her face Remus saw a mixture of Hermione Granger and Professor McGonagall. "You have taught five of my children, and _all of them_ have written to tell me how much they enjoyed your classes, how you were their favourite teacher, and how much you stuffed into their heads. So yes, Remus, you _are_ the person to ask."

"I suppose," Remus considered, flattered at the praise (that year had revolved around his thoughts of Sirius so much that he did not realize that teaching came to him as naturally as breathing). "I suppose it is because what you love and what you fear is connected at the heart of it. You love so much – that your deepest fear is to lose what you love. It's not anything physical like Ron's spider, or Arthur's gun – but you love to the extent that not loving would be the most terrible scenario for you. That's why, losing everyone like that – would naturally be what you fear most."

"I…see." Molly looked discomfited, but also somewhat pleased as she gestured up towards the ceiling. There was a knowing look in her eye as she continued. "Is Sirius dealing with the Boggart now? He should be waiting for you."

"He should be done." Remus supposed airily, Vanishing the parchment with a twist of his wand. His mind wandered as he went up the flights of stairs, to the year he had spent at Hogwarts. He had focused so much on his lover, built his world around Sirius that he forgot that the highlight of that year was bringing strange creatures to the junior classes, seeing the first years' adoration and fear of pixies, the serious seniors and how they focused hard on their spells until he made them make it a game between houses. He loved it, he reflects, opening the door to Sirius' room, he loved teaching students. He feels a flutter of hatred toward Snape.

"Guess what my Boggart is?" Sirius says without preamble the moment Remus entered and shut the door tight behind him.

"Er…" Remus frowned. "Wasn't it the horse... the Thestral. I remember thinking it was funny you were scared of bat horses, but on hindsight I realize it was that you were scared of seeing a death. Rather macabre, but I suppose it was driven from my mind by James and Peter arguing over who got to fight it next and the thing turned into half a slug."

"Yeah," Sirius, who always was ready to reminisce, waved the memory aside impatiently. "Guess what it is now, Moony? You. You. Your bloody bastard body, lying on the fucking floor. Torn to shreds by your own claws. That's my Boggart."

"Oh." Remus said, and his lips were cold. He was cold all over suddenly. Boggarts were one thing when they were calmly discussed with Molly, clinically dissected into slices of yes and no, and perhaps. But when it was Sirius who said it, his voice hollow and dangerously close to overflowing emotion, Remus felt his fingers tremble. He does not deserve to be a Boggart, he has been too cowardly, too dangerous, too bland. He was the Professor who loved Muggle literature and filling the heads of students, he was the lover who was always there. He was not someone adored to the extent that losing him was Sirius' greatest terror. Even worse than watching a death. Worth it? Remus thinks desperately, feeling his hands shake even further. _So break, my heart_ , he thinks of Hamlet's soliloquy, _for I must hold my tongue._ The shuddering hands rose upward, until they were undoing the buttons of his shirt, comfortingly sliding metal through plaid. His shirt undone, he lets it hang over his shoulders as he blindly reaches out to Sirius to grip his shoulders.

"I'll be worth it," bursts out of him suddenly. "I swear, let me show you – I'll be worth it."

He presses forward to kiss Sirius, to show him that he was the lover he deserved, but his lips only scraped Sirius' unshaven chin before he was pushed backward. Remus felt his face tingle, he knew he looked white and fevered and deranged. What sort of lover? He thinks, his breaths coming harsh and fast now, whistling through his nose as he looks down at his unbuttoned shirt and the section of skin showing through. There is nothing as ugly as a half dressed man, he thinks – worthless, worthless, undeserving. So exposed, so base, so primal that he had to show Sirius his love by means of sex as he just had. He could not look up to see the disappointment on Sirius' face – he feels deranged and undone. Unlike the Professor. It was Professor Remus Lupin that had walked in and now his breaths were tumbling over the other and his skin was white as the lily's first bloom. Undeserving, vulnerable, worthless – he thinks viciously.

"I apologize," he murmurs. "I'll leave."

But Sirius catches his wrist. It's not a sexual grabbing with raking nails, but a loose clasping of hands as if they were tethered together. Sirius wants to tear himself open; so involved was he in his own loneliness and his own despair and frustration that he had not noticed how Remus felt. How Remus had not truly changed into the Professor, how he had not truly morphed into this strange new creature full of knowledge and wisdom that left Sirius far behind. No, he was still the same insecure, white-faced man, who looked for acceptance and reassurance like a man dying of thirst. And by God, Sirius winces, by God he was so beautiful – half naked, half-dressed, a vision of his deepest dreams in Azkaban, his beautiful lover with the hair touching his shoulders, his full lips cut with the ghost of a scar, his delicate jawline and his pale, wide eyes. That behind the veneer of the Professor there was still the inexplicable, ephemeral insecure man who clung to Muggle literature like a lifeline. This miscommunication had to stop, he decided.

"Stop it," Sirius snapped, his other hand grabbing Remus' shoulder. Too close. "Stop it. You do not need to be _deserving_ of anything. You deserve everything. You don't have to show me you love me by sucking my cock – you don't have to show me _shit_ because I know. I thought – you'd left me far behind intellectually, mentally, which is why I was shocked that I still loved you to this extent. I was afraid I was the more loving one now. That's fucking frightening."

"No," Remus laughs now, although his face is still bloodless. "I'll always be the more loving one."

"We can both take that role if you wish." Sirius smiles easily, and he looks again as he did in school, the hollowing of the cheekbones became handsome rather than haggard, the eyes stared passionately instead of desperately. They lead each other to bed, where they don't have sex but rather lie together, the sheets over their shoulders like tumbling water and they are finally no longer blind. The veil has come off from over their eyes, and there is an understanding now; it is no longer merely suffering, desperate Sirius and Professor Lupin but also rabid, laughing Sirius and shy, clever Remus.

"You will _not_ believe this," Sirius declared confidently, striding into the kitchen of Grimmauld Place where Remus nursed a cup of coffee, and Tonks was on the floor trying to clean up another of her numerous spills and burns – a pot of sugar this time. "Tonks, what the hell are you doing? Can't you clean the damn thing with your wand?"

"Well," Tonks put on an air of mock piety, turning her hair blonde and curly. "Well, you see dear cousin, Molly said I'll stop spilling stuff if wipe it up manually everytime. Mum agrees with her. So as the filial –"

"KREACHER!" Sirius yelled, as Remus rolled his eyes at the pair. The house elf arrived, miraculously not clutching anything terribly odd, and eyed Sirius balefully. "Kreacher, clean up this shit."

"Yes, Master." Kreacher bowed low, his long nose brushing the grimy knuckles of his toes. "Master is kind to give Kreacher such an order. Such simple tasks, compared to cleaning the sheets after Master and his filthy partner engage in sodomy… Kreacher loat-"

"Well, Master does not give a damn." Sirius cut him off, trying not to laugh at Remus' horrified face. "Okay, now guess who's teaching at Hogwarts?"

"Teaching Defence?" Remus asked thoughtfully, trying to come up with a number of suitable candidates. In a fit of vanity, he was sure he was at the top of all his own lists but never would he have admitted that to Sirius. "Slughorn? Remember that fat one who taught us in fifth year? He taught Potions though."

"Yes, I remember." Sirius muttered dryly. "Bloke only had his eye on Lily, it was like the rest of us were toadstools that magically came up with potions. Anyway, guess again."

"Snape?" Tonks queried, and immediately was greeted by Sirius feverishly crossing himself and Remus knocking on the wood of the table frantically.

"God forbid." Sirius said darkly. "No, bastards, it's _Umbridge_."

Remus' reaction was considerably worse than what it was earlier about Snape, as he jumped back in his seat and let off a stream of undignified curses. Sirius bit the inside of his cheeks to stop himself from laughing, he knew Remus had a perfectly valid reason to hate Umbridge but it was so hard to catch the man off his guard that literally any instance was humorous. Remus continued expostulating at length about the vileness of her hair, the atrocious scent she dripped herself with, the vulgarity of her frame, and the depravity of pink bows. Sirius let him go on for five minutes before interrupting.

"Oi," he called out. "Once you finish discussing the finer points of her flat nose, would you be able to tell me if it's a good idea for Harry and his mates to start up a Defence Against the Dark Arts club?"

"Defence against what?" Remus asked, momentarily distracted. "How would they do that? Do you mean just Ron, Hermione and a few others?"

"More like half the upper school," Sirius snorted, snatching Remus coffee from his hands. "Anyhow, Harry's going to teach them the…finer aspects of Defense. As in, what Umbridge isn't teaching them."

"Well, that means he'd have to cover the whole syllabus," Tonks grinned, "I was under Umbridge for a month. God knows how many kitten covered plates I had to break before she finally asked me to transfer to Kingsley's department."

"Hell," Remus continued the uncharacteristic swearing. "Does this mean they'll all come home for Christmas brandishing silver forks at me, and begin following the hallowed path of Percy Weasley?"

"Well, not quite." Tonks disagreed lightly, trying to remove a coffee stain from her shirt. "My contact told me they were all incredibly against her. Sets them detention, as in carving their hands open."

"Kreacher is pleased little devil spawns cut their hands…" uttered the ominous tones of the house elf. "Kreacher would like to serve the gracious and lordly Dolores Umbridge, but no…."

Sirius looks like a ghost in the doorway. His silhouette was dark and lean, cuts of shadow and blackness in the grey light of the hall. He had fallen asleep earlier in his room and Remus thought it would have been a shame to wake him up, so he retired in the room across the corridor where he had kept the books he took from the Black library. But here Sirius was, black on grey like an apparition as Remus blinked his eyes blearily. He sits up, and he sees that Sirius' eyes are hollow and there are smudges beneath them like a chimney sweep had wiped away tears. His face what gaunt and white, he looked like the prisoner he had been for twelve years as he reached out a hand to Remus.

"Can I lie with you?" It was a strange, grownup phrase said in the lilting tones of a child who arose shivering from a nightmare. But Sirius hadn't had nightmares as a child, he was content and well fed, and it is only now he seeks solace after visions lift him out of sleep.

"Come on then," Remus pulls back the sheets, feigning a casual air. "You all right?"

"We're so old, damn it." Sirius curses as he slides in next to Remus, curling his wiry body into his lover like a comma. His fingers grope feverishly and finds Remus' shirt, finds his heartbeat and lays his hand there as if it were the only thing that tethered him to life. Remus lets him breathe for a while, lets him take comfort in the sanctity of regular heartbeats and normalcy, before asking him in a voice so soft it barely cracked the air.

"What have you dreamed of?"

"Us." Sirius' face crumples and he buries it within Remus' shoulders – he was never one for excessive shows of emotion, not when he could hide it. "I dreamed of us, growing old, our hair turning white, and it's so bloody… we were… fuck, we were seventy."

"Isn't that a good dream?" Remus murmurs, listening to Sirius' wet, irregular breathing. "Isn't that what we want?"

"Fucking hell, Remus – it's unfair. It's fucking _unfair_." Sirius gasped. "That we live so long, and James snuffed it at twenty fucking one years old. That we survived and can sleep like this, and he's…"

"No." Remus' voice was ice on steel, a clanging – that if left too long, would melt. "No, you can't say that James would have done this, or James could have done that. James – is – is gone. And you're here, and Harry's here. And Harry is _not_ James, and he is _not_ Lily, and it's because we're alive that we can look at him. We're alive – so you should bloody well start acting like this."

"You don't miss him. I think of him," Sirius's teeth glint in the dark, his eyes still shut. "Every bloody day, fu-"

"What's the use in that?" Remus hisses poisonously, his fingers shaking on Sirius' shoulders. "What the _hell_ is the use in wasting your life thinking about those who are dead?"

Remus' teeth are clenched so tight he is afraid his jaw would crush itself from within, he hopes he no longer has to speak anymore. It hurts him to feel Sirius shudder violently against him, but he doesn't speak word. He watches as Sirius lilts off to feverish sleep, black hair tangled across the sheets, eyes shut tight, jaw working – where was his beautiful Greek god of a lover? Where was their Greek love? Remus sits up, slowly – and swings his legs over the side of the bed, placing his head in his hands. It throbs slowly, the tension in his head and neck exacerbated by this incident, his temples vibrating almost with the intensity of his headache.

"I'm sorry –" he gasps into the darkness, where the only one to hear was the sleeping Sirius. He thinks of James however, not Sirius – how James would grin at almost anything, even when it was the stupidest joke. How James was almost painfully straight and brought up by elderly parents but took his gay best friends not merely in stride but in shared mirth. How James got so drunk at his bachelor's party that they had to carry him home, and even then he was singing 'Odo the Hero' at unseemly pitches. How James was so in touch with his conscience that he would try to apologize, however childishly, to Lily every time he laughed at her, and how he would always sit by Remus when he was upset or when Sirius was moody, how he saved his worst enemy from his best friends.

Remus hates playing the villain, Remus hates telling Sirius to stop thinking about James – because how _could_ he, when Remus himself could only see the man in almost everything. He shivers and thinks – no sleep tonight. He drapes the remainder of the blankets around Sirius' hunched shoulders and looks at his table, lit by the dull white light from lamps outside and picks up a book. He flips through the assorted poetry, pages and pages of lovers and fighters – and folds one down, his thumbnail creasing the dog eared page.

 _I cannot say, and I will not say  
That he is dead. He is just away….._

… _..Think of him still as the same. I say,  
He is not dead—he is just away."_

He knows within himself, that Sirius would never read it – that he would read Moste Potente Potions before he touched a piece of Muggle literature. But still, he leaves it by his fingers, where he could reach for it when he woke.

"I just made breakfast." Sirius declared proudly, a roguish smile on his face. He laughed to see Remus leaning on the kitchen counter, his fingers curled over yet another endless mug of coffee. It was another homely, funny thing about his boyfriend, how he loved to drown his coffee in milk and sugar as if he drank it for taste and not effect. Remus raises his eyebrows and looks at him, surveying the way his hands clenched excitedly behind him.

"You're bloody domestic, you know that?" Sirius continued, and moved closer to his lover, pressing both hands on his chest. He pushes Remus back against the counter, the other man leaving his coffee on the table in surprise as Sirius ran his long fingers down his spine, pressing hard. "Lord, you're like a fucking little wife."

"Sirius –" Remus feels himself stirring, the light in Sirius' eyes is enough to turn him on. He swallows his coffee, it seemed to stick and slide down his throat – he winced.

"What is it?" Sirius asks then, pausing in his administrations. There was a look of concern on his face that was almost unbecoming, James-like, and his hands loosened and fell from Remus.

"Just that job at the bookstore." Remus tried to make his shrug nonchalant. It was a wizarding bookstore that sold Muggle literature alongside spellbooks and working there part time had made his life, along with this addition of Sirius, bearable. "The owner worked it out. He wasn't prejudiced or anything… but the decree. Neither of us wanted to place to close down. So I left."

"Damn it, Moony," Sirius breathes. "That bookstore was the perfect fucking job for someone like you."

His breath shivers in the air.

"Every fucking morning you wake up. You wake up and you run around the world doing, and doing, and just fucking doing shit for others. You wake up every day –" Sirius doesn't know how to finish the sentence so he leans his forehead against Remus' shoulder. He knows, more than anyone – how Remus takes every slap the world throws at him, how he endures every time the world pushes him over with a foot at his throat. Enduring has been part and parcel of their existence all these years, sustaining, bearing – but never enjoying. Perhaps they had squeezed too much enjoyment into their seven years at Hogwarts, hurt others in their glee, ruined other students' lives in their joy. At least, Sirius thinks, smelling the heat of the cooked breakfast and the sweetness of the coffee – at least _he_ is here, and constant with his damn Muggle quotes and soppy words.

"And we shan't be parted nevermore –" Sirius says weakly. It's no comfort, he thinks, to remember what he used to say as a naïve teenager in love. But it brings a smile to Remus' paper-white cheeks, crinkling his lip upwards and his eyes closed. He kisses Sirius on the cheek, chastely at first but ran on to his lips – pressing harder. The air in the room is like a pressure cooker, pressing them together, pushing, shoving. Remus' old fashioned waistcoat is pulled off his shoulders by Sirius' large, veined hands as he felt the hot blast of his breath on the exposed sweaty curve of his neck. Shirtless – they repair upward to Sirius' room in a haze of kissing and stumbling over doorstops – laughing because _what if_ Molly or Tonks, or (god forbid) Mad Eye sees them like this. Then they are in Sirius' room, papered with Muggle men and women in various states of undress, and Remus pushes Sirius onto the bed with a sort of ferocity he had previously only displayed on moons.

"Say yes," he growls from the recesses of his throat. "Tell me you're open to me."

"Take me as I am –" Sirius pants, unbuckling his trousers, pulling down his boxers. His erection stands up, and Remus presses his hot, inviting mouth onto it, a hint of the drag of teeth. Sirius arches upward and he thinks – so cliché, to be taken in such a boyish way by his boyhood lover. A drop of sweat lands on his stomach from Remus' forehead and he shudders at the intimacy, the closeness of them, oh he loves so much.

Remus moves lower, licks at his entrance, the hint of teeth is no longer a hint but an outright scraping and begging, Sirius spreads his legs wider like a woman being taken for the first time. There is a finger inside him, and another, slowly opening him up from within and Sirius' head is turbulent and black on the sheets, hair whipping into his eyes. He has been taken so many times by Remus, he has taken Remus – but every time feels novel, exciting, indescribable. He shivers as Remus rests his light weight on him, chest to sticky chest, Sirius' cock trapped between them. Remus enters him slowly, as if approaching a new place, and the tight rings of Sirius envelop him. There is thrusting, there is feverish whispering, there is shuddering and begging but they don't recall it earlier. Just like it is difficult to recall pain, it is difficult to recall orgasm – the heated peak of when Remus comes hot within Sirius, wet and sticky and wasted. It is tough to remember how Sirius spills over his stomach, his seed spent and brow wet with exhaustion.

"Love –" Sirius muses (another cliché – he thinks later) as the sweat cools on their bodies and Remus covers them delicately with the sheet. "This love is what keeps me here in this shithole of a house. To see your face change and your hair grow. This is what love has been making me do; to be a slave to you."

"Do you not want it, then?" Remus asks, fiddling with a loose thread. "It sounds… inconvenient."

"It is," agreed Sirius. "It is. But it is what keeps me alive."

So poetic, Remus considers. He has a feeling that Sirius has actually read those damn Muggle books.

"You will _stay here._ " Snape warns Sirius, his eyes flashing oil black depths. "Stay here, and do not do anything except keep an eye on your infernal elf. Lupin, Tonks, Kingsley – I have alerted Dumbledore. Go to the Ministry and get that idiot boy."

"None of them have any right to!" Sirius roars, and his hand slams on the table, shattering a crystal goblet (Mundungnus would have wept). "Damn you all, I _will fetch my godson."_

"Let him go," Remus relents (he always relents to Sirius). "He won't be seen, I'll see to it."

"On your damn head." Snape spits, and spins in the fire.

"How lucky am I," Sirius smiles – turning to Remus. "How lucky am I to love such a thing as you?"

So unpredictable, thinks Remus somewhat fondly as Sirius grabs his coat and wand. So brave, Remus knows, as he and Sirius deflect curses from no-doubt high ranking Death Eathers. I love him, he decides, as Sirius begins laughing as he duels Bellatrix. It was the laugh that made Remus finish off his Death Eater and stand staring at Sirius in awe, in admiration. Sirius' hair was flying, his eyes were flashing, and Remus thinks – _'I love you as certain dark things are to be loved – in secret between the shadow and the soul.'_

And the shadow comes, and the shadow claims.

"Harry, no-" Remus' begs the last trace of Sirius' hopes not to go dashing into death himself. It is a selfish thought, but oh he is tired as he grabs onto the boys flailing shoulders, his tearing throat and his light, burning eyes. He struggles with the awkward strength of adolescence (he knows – he had been in a band of boys for seven years) before collapsing forward. Another boy comes, he remembers chubby, unfortunate Neville from his teaching years and he tries to recall funny events from that year so as to hold off the crushing weight of the dissipation of Sirius Black from flesh to nothingness. He discusses calmly with them the location of friends, and it is only a momentary shock he feels when Harry slips away from him, a slight nip of pain like getting caught in your pants zipper.

"Remus –" Dumbledore is there, his hair flying and his eyes blue. "Remus! Gather the other children and get them to Hogwarts. Then Floo to Headquarters somehow to report to me later. Go!"

He stands there next to Neville and stares at Dumbledore's retreating back, a slow bubbling anger rising in him, popping at the surface. It's all well and good for _him_ , he thinks, his greater good, his whole world. He wants to throttle the man. Selfish, he thinks again – will a loss of lover lead to _such_ a change in personality?

"P-Professor Lupin, I can take you to Ginny and the others if you want." Neville ventures, his face even more frightened than before, sweat trickling from his flattened hair.

"All right," he agrees and he thinks he is doing a good job of this normalcy lark. "All right. We'll go back."

Back where?

The children are huddled in a group, all bravado and hopes for a glorious rescue are gone and they are fifteen and tired and in pain. Ginny looks up at him, her face bloodless and pinched with the burning in her ankle, but there is such a look of pity (the wholehearted, sorrowful kind, not the patronizing sort) on her face that Remus feels like his loose grasp on control would slip and he would start begging for the return of Sirius Black in front of five kids. He does nothing of the sort, and in reality, he makes the kids grab onto him and apparate outside of Hogwarts. He watches as Poppy takes them in and offers them comfort and something slopes into his brain, sinister – _your lover is dead._

Grimmauld Place is heartbreakingly – the same. The sameness angers Remus, for something so tremendous has gone from this earth and vanished into nothing yet the heads of the house elves still gawked from the banisters. He sinks into the sofa, and thinks – I have only gotten him back. Sirius has only been back for such a fleeting and short time, he has only been back for five minutes and instead of rotting away in prison, he is nothing now.

"Remus, have any of the others arrived?" Molly asks from the doorway, wiping her hands on the apron as she hurried to sit next to him. "I heard…"

Her voice shivers.

"I heard Ron and Ginny and Harry…. are they?"

"They're safe, Molly." His smile is wan and his grasp on control is almost nonexistent – he wants to die. Sirius, he thinks, would have paced and discussed the battle. It is dusk outside and the sun is going to sleep and Sirius Black has lived for such a short miserable life. Sirius has worn holes in the carpet of this house and in the Hogwarts detention trails and in numerous walls and in Remus heart that it is almost fitting that he himself is a hole now. An absence of existence.

"Tonks?" Molly ventures.

"In Mungo's." He feels then, he cannot have Molly play this terrible guessing game – it would hurt her. "They're all safe. Except Sirius. The archway in the Ministry – he –"

"In the Department of Mysteries?" Molly's voice is hushed and the tears already swim in her eyes. Remus cannot stand it, he cannot stand facing another person without his sun and moon and stars shining solidly in his sky, his burnished black hair glinting as it had for so many years. He feels his eyes burn and the tears finally come, and along with it the cruel whispers of poetry he had not yet gotten to share – _your hands once touched this table and this sliver, and I have seen your fingers hold this glass._

"He had no chance to live –" he is crying unstoppably, terribly. "He had no chance to live in these years and he deserved s-"

Sirius deserved the world. He was the last rose in rainy England, who would close only when the other roses have slept – to watch over and to guard. He was the smell of fresh turned earth to a starving farmer and the light of day to a hostage.

"I gave him nothing at all –" he confesses thickly, and like her own children, buries himself in Molly's shoulder, takes solace in how her arms wrap around him like a pair of stronger, wirier ones once had.

"I was nothing –" he loses breath in the face of the presumed truth. For what is poetry and books to a man who cared for none? What is kissing and sex to a man who loved the free air? What is love to a man who had the capacity to love so much more?

"You were everything." Molly says, and her hand is in his hair, stroking it from his hot forehead.

And it hurts more – knowing that such a thing as him – was Sirius' everything.

The books have been read. That much he is sure of, for he can see the telltale signs on them of a careless reader. Jam stains and tea spills, pages turned with fingers covered in chip grease. And underlines in pencil, and scribbled comments on the margin. He feels his throat thicken as if he were going to cry again, but he laughs now – Sirius has been reading all the damn books Remus had been giving him throughout the year. All twenty six of them were well thumbed and underlined and scribbled on, and it is so incongruous with the rest of Sirius that Remus buries his nose in the book and tries to smell what had made him do this, to read like e hadn't ever read. A dictionary lay open beside the shelf and it makes it real – because Sirius looked up words in the bloody _dictionary_ for him. Remus settles himself on the floor next to Sirius' bed.

Remus opens the book of dirges and sees the lines Sirius had underlined over and over again –

 _We looked upon the present with delight  
And doubted not the future would be kinder  
And never knew the loneliness of night._

He snaps it shut – for how true it was of them in those years, it meant Sirius had read the book so thoroughly as to be absorbed in it. Those early years where every step was in the present, where the farthest ahead they thought was to the next detention. When Snape was the worst person in the world, Dumbledore the greatest and they had hugged casually and loved with abandon. Remus, with trembling fingers – opens Jane Eyre, he cannot believe that Sirius actually read this account of a girl's life. He cannot believe Sirius sat through the passages about being in love, and being afraid to admit it for Sirius had known no such qualms or confusions. He opens the folded page.

 _I have found you. You are my sympathy–my better self–my good angel–I am bound to you with a strong attachment. I think you good, gifted, lovely: a fervent, a solemn passion is conceived in my heart; it leans to you, draws you to my centre and spring of life, wrap my existence about you–and, kindling in pure, powerful flame, fuses you and me in one._

He knows who this is about – this is about Sirius' idealized version of Remus. Remus who he sees as good and kind and angelic, whom he sees as anything but a beast. He traces the rough underlines, the bluntness of the pencil and thinks of Sirius the lover – just as passionate as Sirius the friend. And he had every Sirius in the world, lover, friend, partner, husband. He presses his lips to the dryness of the page and his heart aches at how much Sirius had loved. Remus opens one last book – the one most thumbed, and sees the numerous underlines, the multitude of dog-ears in the book and he smiles. This was _Maurice_ , by E.M. Forster – and Sirius had scoffed when he received it ("posh poufs!") that it seems almost ridiculous that he's perused it to this extent. He looks at some of the highlights –

" _I swear from the bottom of my heart I want to be healed. I want to be like other men, not this outcast whom nobody wants."_

" _I think you're beautiful, the only beautiful person I've ever seen. I love your voice and everything to do with you, down to your clothes or the room you are sitting in. I adore you."_

" _Maurice and Alec still roam the greenwood."_

It is the last one that kills. Sirius had crossed out the names and added theirs in his sprawling writing. But it rings true in a manner – Remus and Sirius would roam the forest, the Shack, Hogwarts, and Grimmauld Place. They would live forever in their own hearts and perhaps in the fickle hearts of others. Remus clasps the books to his chest and smiles, his teeth glinting in the gloom, his eyes shining. They would live forever, the Greek lovers, frost of snow meeting heat of summer – they have loved and lived for decades. They were the black shines of new pianos and the gleam of mahogany, polished and refined lovers – as much Sirius had covered his South England accent with a Cockney, as much as Remus hid everything within books.

I have your voice by heart, Remus thinks, and I will listen to it every morning, and it will be _enough_.

 _ **A/N – That's it! I hope you liked my characterization of them, I had always seen Remus to be the bookish type into literature. You should check out some of the books he mentions, they're pretty great. Also, a point I want to clarify is Sirius' reading of the books: I meant it as a double edged sword actually – that Sirius read them because he loves Remus but also consider this, what desperate boredom would make a man like Sirius turn to such heavy literature?**_

 _ **I also honestly wish that you liked this piece enough to leave me some reviews of any length. I know is pretty dead nowadays so I appreciate any and all reviews now. Thank you in advance x**_


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